Cougar of Flourish
Aug. 24th, 2020 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoI woke up just at dawn, a time I rather enjoy, or would, if I'd had more than 5 hours of sleep. This is the second 5-hour night in a row. I'm going to need more sleep real soon now. The Sparrowhawk woke up pretty early too, so we had time for tea and also to go for a walk before it got really hot. The goldenrod is about to bloom. I have a small collection of colorful cotton dresses. When it gets really hot, and I don't have any dirty work to do, I wear one of those instead of my normal jeans and a t-shirt. They're lightweight and cool, and it makes a nice change.
I put away some more laundry and watered all my plants. It's been hot, dry, and windy (okay, by Michigan standards, for you California people out there) and the soil dries up very quickly. I picked a nice batch of purple pod beans, and judging by the number of flowers still in process, I'll probably get more. I don't want to let them wither up for lack of water. As I was going around giving all the plants a drink, the sky darkened in the west, and I thought I heard some distant thunder. However, no rain ever came our way, so it's a good thing I watered them. Those purple pod beans have almost always been a terrific producer for me. Last year, for some reason, they didn't do well, but this year they've been great. The Sparrowhawk made stir fry and rice to go with the beans, and the rest of the meat from chicken #1. We've had three meals for two people out of it, and I'll get some nice broth from the bones, too. It's not bad for a five-dollar chicken.
I was thinking about the problem of Susans, which has some relevance to an idea that is idly percolating in my brain. It's not just Susan Pevensie, although she gets the worst of the Susan complex. There always seems to be a Susan. There's a Susan Walker in Swallows and Amazons, and a Susan Dunnett in The Children Who Lived in a Barn. In The Story of the Treasure Seekers,, she's called Dora, and in Five Children and It, she's called Anthea and is marginally less suppressed, but she's still a Susan. Susan is the oldest girl, often with an older brother who is the family leader. She is Little Mommy, taking care of younger children, serving as loyal XO to the older boy, cooking and cleaning, making the trains run on time, being the voice of caution, prudence, and rule-following. Most of us have an internal Susan, and that's probably a good thing. But it can't be much fun to be the personification of that inner voice. We've just been reading We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea, which is one of the most exciting Arthur Ransome books. It was my favorite when I was a kid, but I hadn't noticed, as I did this time around, that First Mate Susan gets treated rather unfairly in this book. Previously, she has been a bit of a worrywart, but highly competent. In WDMTGTS, she gets too anxious to realize that Captain John's desperate decision is the only safe choice in a bad situation, she gets too seasick to help, and she cries. I realize that the author did this because he needed a foil for John, someone who would express the fears and misgivings that the reader will naturally have. But it seems unfair to hand this job off to Susan. However, Susans are always the ones who get those jobs no one else wants. There should be a story where Susan gets to be the protagonist.
I put away some more laundry and watered all my plants. It's been hot, dry, and windy (okay, by Michigan standards, for you California people out there) and the soil dries up very quickly. I picked a nice batch of purple pod beans, and judging by the number of flowers still in process, I'll probably get more. I don't want to let them wither up for lack of water. As I was going around giving all the plants a drink, the sky darkened in the west, and I thought I heard some distant thunder. However, no rain ever came our way, so it's a good thing I watered them. Those purple pod beans have almost always been a terrific producer for me. Last year, for some reason, they didn't do well, but this year they've been great. The Sparrowhawk made stir fry and rice to go with the beans, and the rest of the meat from chicken #1. We've had three meals for two people out of it, and I'll get some nice broth from the bones, too. It's not bad for a five-dollar chicken.
I was thinking about the problem of Susans, which has some relevance to an idea that is idly percolating in my brain. It's not just Susan Pevensie, although she gets the worst of the Susan complex. There always seems to be a Susan. There's a Susan Walker in Swallows and Amazons, and a Susan Dunnett in The Children Who Lived in a Barn. In The Story of the Treasure Seekers,, she's called Dora, and in Five Children and It, she's called Anthea and is marginally less suppressed, but she's still a Susan. Susan is the oldest girl, often with an older brother who is the family leader. She is Little Mommy, taking care of younger children, serving as loyal XO to the older boy, cooking and cleaning, making the trains run on time, being the voice of caution, prudence, and rule-following. Most of us have an internal Susan, and that's probably a good thing. But it can't be much fun to be the personification of that inner voice. We've just been reading We Didn't Mean To Go To Sea, which is one of the most exciting Arthur Ransome books. It was my favorite when I was a kid, but I hadn't noticed, as I did this time around, that First Mate Susan gets treated rather unfairly in this book. Previously, she has been a bit of a worrywart, but highly competent. In WDMTGTS, she gets too anxious to realize that Captain John's desperate decision is the only safe choice in a bad situation, she gets too seasick to help, and she cries. I realize that the author did this because he needed a foil for John, someone who would express the fears and misgivings that the reader will naturally have. But it seems unfair to hand this job off to Susan. However, Susans are always the ones who get those jobs no one else wants. There should be a story where Susan gets to be the protagonist.
